Jack looked around the en suite. There were blood-soaked towels piled high at the non-tap end of the bathtub and a red watery stain ran from them to the plughole. Blood smears covered the walls and bath rim, where a vain attempt to clean up had been made. The CSI team would be here for days.
‘How did they get out?’ Jack asked. ‘I didn’t see any blood on the way up here. So, how did they get out through the house and leave no trace of what happened in here?’
Angel tapped Jack on the shoulder. ‘Well, Jacky, I’d wear one of these paper suits. Take it off before you leave the room, pop it into a plastic bag and Bob’s your auntie, £4.99 on Amazon.’
Anik was in the front garden, away from the stench of the greenhouse and the sight of the en suite slaughterhouse. He was instructing a couple of uniformed PCs to round up all CCTV from the area, including the one belonging to Mr Warton next door. Through the large bay window of the front drawing room, Anik could now see Jack rifling through the drawers of an oversized antique bureau.
Jack was looking for the red notebook he’d seen Avril with on the day she gave him Jessica Chi’s phone number. The scrappy list of stolen items she’d given him was written on a page torn from a notebook of that size, so Jack suspected that it was Avril’s go-to place for all of the things she wanted to remember. Perhaps she’d written something important in it. Jack moved from the drawing room, into the lounge, picking up Anik on his way through the hall. ‘She had a notebook. A5. Red. Help me look for it.’ In the lounge, Anik searched one side of the room and Jack searched the other.
Anik pulled his mask down and tucked it under his chin. ‘CSI have moved up into Adam Border’s old bedroom, till the greenhouse is safe for them to go into. And the body can be removed whenever.’ Jack was just about to have a go at him by pointing out that ‘the body’ was a person with a name, then quickly thought better of it. Every murder victim sometimes gets referred to as ‘the body’. Jack knew he only found it disrespectful today because of his own feelings of guilt.
Jack opened an ottoman that doubled as a footstool. Inside there were more brochures for various security systems. Again, Jack’s guilt rushed to the surface: he should have helped Avril choose the best system and he should have insisted that she get it installed right away. Why the hell hadn’t he? But Jack knew why: it was because he’d pre-judged her as an eccentric who was probably exaggerating or even lying. And because she was annoying, he’d just wanted to get out of her house.
Every drawer Jack searched was crammed with old receipts, mainly for food shopping or from the garden centre. From a cursory flick through, Jack could see that they supported the timeline suggested by the neighbour, Mr Warton: during the time Adam Border worked as Avril’s gardener, there was an abundance of garden centre purchases, but these stopped when he moved out. Also, her grocery receipts showed the moment she went from shopping for two people to shopping for one. Everything Jack found was rubbish that most people wouldn’t bother keeping; there was nothing remotely important, such as a passport, birth certificate or bank documents.
There was a knock on the open lounge door. ‘Give us another half hour...’ the sub officer had sweat streaks down his face from wearing his tight mask, ‘then the greenhouse is all yours. There’s no chance of the fire reigniting now, but we have to remove the remaining glass, ’cos that’s all at risk of falling. Your Drug Squad boys are eager to get inside too.’
Jack continued to search inside the house and Anik opted to search outside.
From one of the grocery purchases, where Avril had used contactless payment, Jack noticed that she’d mistakenly been given the merchant’s receipt which had her entire bank card details on it, rather than the customer copy which only displays the final four digits. He made a short call back to the squad room and set Morgan the task of trying to gain access to Avril’s finances. Jack was intrigued to know just how much money she’d been left by her husband. If she was loaded, as Jessica Chi suggested, then why was she taking the monumental risk of growing cannabis? Especially on such a large scale.
DC Morgan still spent his days sitting in the corner of the room, defying medical science. He injected insulin twice daily, ate enough calories to keep an elephant alive and existed on a blood glucose level of 25 millimoles per litre. He generally moved at the speed of a snail but give him a computer-based task and he was a blur. Morgan said that he’d get the correct permissions to dig into Avril’s bank accounts and get back to Jack as soon as he was in.
Jack moved methodically from room to room, searching for... he didn’t know what.
Avril’s kitchen was surprisingly new and high-tech, something he hadn’t really noticed on his previous visit, and her food tastes were as eclectic as her décor. She had herbs and spices he’d never heard of and ingredients he’d never tried and equipment he couldn’t work out the purpose of. He found himself smiling... Avril could be obnoxious, but at least she was an interesting woman.
Jack wasn’t expecting Ridley to attend the crime scene until the preliminary investigation had been done, especially not in light of his recent shift towards arm’s-length supervision, so it was a surprise when he appeared. ‘Raeburn wants me on the ground with this one. PR and marcomms have painted a worst-case scenario, and she wants to deliver something to the press before they invent their own headlines about police incompetence.’
Ridley and Jack walked together through the overgrown front garden. ‘Raeburn’s only concern is that we’ve done everything right up until this point. But I know that she’s also thinking that dismemberment could mean gangs.’ Jack shared his opinion that it was highly unlikely to be gang related. Ridley wasn’t reassured. ‘So, she’s a bloody drug-dealing pensioner who’s run rings round all of us then, is she?’ Ridley couldn’t hide the concern in his voice. ‘Or maybe she’s a frightened old woman who’s consistently cried “stalker” in fourteen official police statements, all of which we filed and did nothing about? Which one of those horrific options should I tell Raeburn to give to the press?’ Ridley sat down heavily on a low wall.
‘She was scared.’ Jack plucked a leaf from the tree above their heads and picked it apart as he spoke. ‘We didn’t know if it was real or imagined, but—’
‘I’d say we know now,’ Ridley interrupted.
‘Yes, sir, we do. But whilst figuring it out, Laura, Anik and I did everything right. We took the piss a bit behind closed doors, and we got frustrated with Avril for being an awkward and confusing person to deal with, but procedurally acted correctly. We followed every lead, considered every possibility. We just didn’t do it fast enough.’ Jack thought Ridley looked troubled and tired and, God forbid, he also looked apathetic. Ridley eventually broke his silence, instantly proving Jack’s assumptions wrong.
‘Sounds like she was crying out for help, in her own annoying way. So, probably not gangs. Right...’ Ridley paused for a moment to order his thoughts. ‘Jack, you stay here and work with Mal. I want you to be the one to process the greenhouse. Anik can come back to the station with me. I’ll get him and Laura to carry on tracing Adam Border. And I’m going to speak with Arnold Hutchinson, Avril’s family lawyer. He’s acted as liaison between her and some of the jewellers after she started reporting stuff going missing. One or two refused to deal with her directly, so he stepped in. Arnold knew her late husband too. I’ll see what light he might be able to shed on things.’ Ridley put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He looked old. If he did have a new woman in his life, she was either wearing him out or dragging him down. Jack was now more certain than ever that Ridley was heading for retirement.